The war on meat

The whole vegan thing is just a hipster fad that will pass. You will still get the nutjobs however.

Pulled pork gone, craft beer sales almost non existent now, gluten free twats (as in those that did it for non medical reasons) gone.

I know people that were banging on about "craft" butchers a few months ago. Now allegedly vegans that enjoy "real street food"..

No doubt some other fad will appear in the spring/summer and being vegan will be forgotten.

Ultimate Seduction wrote: »

How does farming cows have have a huge contribution to global warming?

Something to do with the methane from cow farts.

Of course the trillions of animals in the wild never fart :rolleyes:

prinzeugen wrote: »

The environmental vegans theory that going vegan will save the planet is bollox.

How much of your vegan diet has to be flown in by plane from thousands of miles away because it cant be grown in our climate?

If everyone went vegan in Ireland you would need more planes to fly food in than the Berlin airlift!

All of them pumping out more Co2 than the cows.

And dont get me started on the meat is murder vegans. They should just be locked up on Shutter Island..

Sshh, we can't be ruining their sense of smug self-satisfaction like that

We import 3.5 million tonnes of food and 3 million tonnes of animal feed. "Locally produced" is meaningless when it comes to animal food since lots of imported feed probably went into the animal.

katiek102010 wrote: »

The reasons I have heard, bearing in mind I have not had the opportunity to read the full study, are as follows

1) eating meat causes deforestation

2) causes climate change

3) causes changes to water

Now is it the increase in cattle population that causes all the above as in my opinion it would be the growing of crops.

It’s interesting the way the press is portraying the story as they are saying all the above but not backing up the claims with any logical explanation as to why.

The last time I checked the human body is designed to be carnivore. Completely changing our natural diet cannot be healthy

We’re not a very good carnivore if most raw meat makes us violently ill.
Genuine carnivores like cats get very unwell on a vegetable diet. Humans can thrive on one.

What annoys me about Irish agriculture is the waste that's going on.

We have great land and ability to produce top notch, largely grass fed milk and beef, yet we are still sending a significant % of our farm produce to low value markets.

For example : why are we producing so much milk powder? It's going into food ingredients and baby food but it's going out as an unbranded commodity mostly. We've never developed a big baby food brand.

Also why are we exporting beef to very cheap markets like Egypt? And not only that but things like live export?! We have animals raised in good conditions here and then possibly meeting a terrible death somewhere thousands of km from where they spent their life and for what exactly?! Just to use up some quota ?

Primary agriculture is something like 1.6% of GDP here and if it's responsible for a huge % if our CO2 emissions, then we are heavily subsiding it by buying carbon credits or by paying fines.

I think these kinds of reports are probably not helpful as you're not just going to turn the world vegan. Even if you did there's going to be a massive uptick in requirement for land for soy and pulse production and you're into another version of the same mess as demand for plant protein would be huge.

Yeah you'll make people think a bit and we should be eating less meat and much more balanced diets and be much more concerned about animal welfare but it's something I think that needs more general awareness. This kind of report tends to just get bad press and people's backs up. Effectively it's like mana from heaven to the Trumps and Brexiteer types who'll just point to a liberal conspiracy.

However, I do think Ireland needs to recognise our selling points : a source of very high quality agricultural products due to our climate and landscape.

We shouldn't be chasing the low end of the market and we certainly shouldn't be subsidising the chasing of that aspect of the market.

We could be producing less and being paid a lot more per unit product by simply pushing ourselves up the value chain with ownership of brands and a bigger push towards ultra high quality.

We already have Irish beef and lamb commanding serious premiums in markets like the Benelux and Germany. That's stuff we should be doing a lot more of.

We need to be getting bang for buck in terms of CO2 costs. Otherwise, you're basically going to be paying high carbon taxes and cutting down on your home heating and driving to facilitate a sector that seems to be bound up in driving production without any concept of marketing.

I've no issue supporting farming btw. I just think we should be a hell of a lot more clever about what we are doing as it could actually improve rural quality of life - more and better jobs and more income from branded food companies, better farm incomes, improved animal welfare (less intense farming) and even boost tourism by making the landscape nicer (and less smelly) fewer polluted rivers and lakes and so on.

We've had good government initiatives like Origin Green and so on but, I still don't think we are anywhere near where we could be. There's only so much that the state can do without buy in from the sector and the broader rural community.

EdgeCase wrote: »

Yes and no. I do think the agricultural community is reacting far too aggressively to the billboard advertising though. If anything, they've actually increased PR for vegan groups by getting so hot and bothered about them on various TV shows here.

In fairness, fight fire with fire. Farmers and meat producers are getting enough death and property damage threats to just sit back.

Gael23 wrote: »

Meat is murder

Tasty, tasty murder